


Must I Call This Home?

by Clue1117



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 12 Grimmauld Place, Gen, Runaway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-21
Updated: 2012-04-21
Packaged: 2017-11-04 01:56:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/388390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clue1117/pseuds/Clue1117
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sirius Black never expected he would have to return to his childhood house, not after the way he left.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Must I Call This Home?

I hate this house. Everything about it is oppressive; I want to stand up on the solid wood table and take a hammer to the ceiling, then jump around until I’m standing on a pile of splinters. I want to set it all alight and hold a bonfire, into which I can throw the horrible furniture. 

I don’t want to be back here, but I don’t have much choice. This hell from my childhood is the only place I have left at this point. I walk across the grey slate floor, to the large fireplace. Perhaps raising the temperature to a point where the solid stone kitchen doesn’t pose a risk of hypothermia will make the room seem different enough from the upstairs, where I lived as a child, to make at least this one room tolerable. 

It doesn’t. Instead, all the heat achieves is to make me sweaty and flushed in a cruel mockery of my state as I yelled fitfully at my mother and she disowned me and I slammed the heavy front door, assuming I would never have to cross it’s threshold again.

“So help me God, if you put one foot out that door, you won’t be coming back through it!” My mother screeched as I bolted down the stairs, trying to get away from the argument that had been steadily escalating for the last twenty minutes.

I stop in the dim entrance hall, because I want her to know that she can’t hurt me anymore. “Good! I never want to see you or your stupid, stuck up, _aristocratic _, face again!” Everything about her, even just the shadow of her angry, podgy face as she descends the last of the stairs into the hall full of mildew covered tapestries, makes the constant flame of anger that she and father (a man who hasn’t said a word to me in seven and a half weeks, and even then only bothered to tell me off for being late to a dinner party) have stoked in me flares so that it burns my eyes and throat.__

“Petulant child!” Her hand is extended to slap me, hard across the cheek, if past experiences are anything to go by, but I back up. 

“I’m not a child anymore. I’m old enough to know how horrible you are; I’m old enough to know that what you call love is abuse and I’m sure as hell old enough to know that I never want to have anything do with this twisted, inbreed, fascist family ever again.” 

Her hand drops in shock, but she continues to advance towards me. “How dare you! To insult your mother is one thing, to call into question the honour of our noble family is quite another.” 

I am at the door now, have it open. “This family is neither noble nor mine.” And I slam the heavy wood door closed with a bang that might have been satisfying in another situation. 

It seems to take forever to make it down the decaying marble steps and in to the quiet streets of upscale London. Lunch at a comfortable café proves unsatisfying, while trying to understand the complex groups of squiggles and dots that apparently map out the various tube routes is surprisingly effective at distracting me from the hot anger still threatening to burn its way to the surface. That is, until I realize that I have nowhere to actually take the train. 

I bang my fist hard against the plastic case that contains the map. Kick the metal pole supporting it. Repeat. Again and again, until a steady pounding rhythm is established and it fills my ears, a distraction from the hot tears spilling down my cheeks and off my chin. 

And I am back, stuck in this oppressively hot stone kitchen in a house that I hate, tears staining my clothes where they fall and my fists and feet pounding against the polished wood of the kitchen table, a disturbingly perfect imitation of the day I thought I had seen the last of this hell.


End file.
